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Excerpt:
[3]Call for international meeting
Date: 21 May 2013
From: Daniel Lucey <DRL23@Georgetown.edu>
During
the past 5 weeks I have been kindly welcomed by medical and public
health colleagues while traveling in Jordan, Qatar, UAE, and Egypt to
discuss the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) of
2012-2013, and lessons from the SARS Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) epidemic of
2002-2003.
Based on these experiences, and those working as a
physician during times when novel infectious diseases caused crises in
hospitals e.g., AIDS in San Francisco in 1982, anthrax in Washington in
2001, and SARS in Toronto in 2003, I am writing to recommend 2 measures
be coordinated by international public health and medical authorities to
strengthen preparedness against MERS-CoV:
1- Convene in the
Middle East an open "One Health" MERS-CoV conference within the next 3
weeks, to discuss all key issues necessary to prevent and control this
novel coronavirus.
A. Such key issues would include e.g.,
clinical, epidemiologic, virologic, immunologic, risk communication,
animal reservoir(s), global public health, animal model(s), antiviral
treatment protocols, and additional international collaborative
protocols (e.g., by the International Severe Acute Respiratory and
Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC)).
B. The most recent
information would be shared by the 8 (or more) nations linked to
laboratory-confirmed infections: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, UK,
Germany, France, and Tunisia.
C. The conference should be held in
the next 3 weeks due to the accelerating pace of the "emergence" of the
virus, and also due to increased travel and other traditional activities
prior to and during the month of Ramadan [9 Jul 2013-7 Aug 2013].
2
- Create a detailed medical and public health operational plan for both
hospital and outpatient settings where patients are evaluated for
MERS-CoV.
A. A major goal of this effort is to decrease the risk
of health care facility-associated transmission of this virus, as has
now been proven to occur in several countries.
B. Another major
goal of this effort is to decrease virus transmission in the community
partly by optimizing contact tracing via close collaboration between
medical and public health professionals.
C. Such a detailed plan
can be based on experiences with MERS-CoV in the Middle East, Europe,
and North Africa, as well as the highly detailed plans developed in the
midst of the SARS crises in parts of Asia and Canada in 2003. Such
detail would be in addition to existing guidance on MERS-CoV.
In the spirit of person-to-person cooperation,
--
Daniel R. Lucey MD, MPH
Adjunct Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC <DRL23@Georgetown.edu>
[ProMED-mail
supports Dr. Lucey's call for an international meeting to address
concerns re: the MERS-CoV. As a reminder, there was an international
meeting to discuss the SARS outbreak held in Kuala Lumpur, approximately
this time of year 10 years ago, at which time similar issues were
discussed related to the SARS outbreak. - Mod.MPP
http://www.promedmail.org/direct.php?id=20130521.1726656
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